KABN Radio, Concord
FCC Termination Letter
December 21, 2005
On December 21, 2005, the Federal Communications Commission terminated the license of Concord’s KABN (1480 AM), which had been off the air for more than a year. KABN began its life as 500-watt KWUN, but had only been transmitting traffic and weather reports with a 25-watt signal from 1997 until 2004.
The FCC letter reads, in part:
The license for the above-referenced station expired on December 1, 2005. An application for renewal of this station’s license should have been filed by August 1, 2005. To date, we have no record of receiving a license renewal application for this station, and the station’s license has expired by its own terms.
Accordingly, all authority to operate station KABN(AM), Concord, California, IS TERMINATED and the call letters ARE DELETED. Any operation of this facility is now unauthorized and must cease immediately.
KWUN first went on the air from a studio-transmitter site near the Concord Naval Weapons Station in November 1963. By 1978, the station moved its studios from downtown Concord to the same site. The facility, located at 300 Holly Drive (near Myrtle Drive), housed the studios and offices of KWUN until early 1993, when the building was demolished and KWUN’s five antenna towers were dismantled after its owners lost their lease on the property.
A subdivision of upscale homes was later built on the land. Subsequently, the radio station operated with a temporary 25-watt transmitter from a site near Highway 4 adjacent to the Contra Costa Canal in Concord in order to maintain its legal standing while its owners sought a new transmitter location, albeit to no avail.
SOURCE: KABN (KWUN) FCC Deletion Letter, Bay Area Radio Museum Collection.
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